Centrelink took my annual income for the 2011-12 financial year, divided it by 26 and said 'our records show that this was your fortnightly income for the year, here's what you owe, prove us wrong'. This is all the new data-matching system seems to do. Innovative? No. Revenue raising? Yes... well, maybe (more on this below).
I only received Newstart payments for two short periods that year, and always reported my income correctly. The rest of the year I was earning too much to receive payments. I didn't report that income because I wasn't receiving Centrelink and wasn't obliged to. All of a sudden, that income is now relevant because it appears on my ATO tax return. The system cannot discern what portion of that income I was obliged to report to Centrelink and instead makes the mother of all guestimates and assumes I earned the same amount every fortnight of the year. Each Centrelink frontline worker I've talked to (and my heart goes out to those poor people) has acknowledged how staggeringly crude Centrelink's calculations are. But, as each of them says, there is nothing they can do about it.
I worked four jobs that year, all casual. Centrelink are saying I have to provide payslips from all four of those jobs to prove I don't owe the debt. It would've actually been easier and fairer if they required me to lodge my payslips each fortnight in 2011 before receiving each Newstart payment. Three of these employers are small non-profits and tracking down old payslips for a former employee's phoney Centrelink debt is a significant drain on their very limited resources and takes away from frontline services.
Navigating Centrelink's byzantine and flawed system for disputing the debt has been soul-draining - and I'm a fucking lawyer. I can't imagine the effect this has had on the many recipients of these letters who are in a more disadvantaged position than me. Actually I can, and that's why Centrelink are referring people to suicide prevention hotlines.
My story of trying to deal with the debt mirrors the others I've read about: going into the Centrelink office and staff not knowing what to do with me; hours spent trying to set-up Centrelink online services after 5 years of having not used it; hours spent on the phone to Centrelink getting nowehere; being referred to Centrelink's online platform to 'give the correct figures' but only being able to confirm whether or not the ATO figures were correct, which isn't the issue; being chased by private debt collectors even after telling Centrelink staff that I disputed the debt; seeing the look of dread in the eyes of the Administrator at work when I asked her for my payslips from 2012.
At one stage I got so fired up I decided to make a complaint using the online complaint form. After spending half an hour writing the complaint and clicking send the website crashed and the complaint was lost. Well played, Centrelink, well played.
It's pretty clear that this data matching system is causing untold amounts of stress, frustration, anger and worse in the community: most of it completely unnecessary and unjustified. You'd think that would be reason enough to stop it.
A $2 billion saving for the budget? When you send out 20,000 dodgy debt notices a week, what does that cost in terms of lost productivity: of the individuals who are taking time from work to sort out the debt; of the businesses and organisations that are hunting down old payslips for former employees; of Centrelink who have an influx of people calling up about their debts and requesting that they be reviewed?
All of this stress, frustration and anger created by these false debts leads to heavier burdens on support and mental health services. In my work, I encounter people with mental health challenges who are doing a remarkable job just to stay afloat day after day. Sending a phoney debt letter to some of these people is like throwing a grenade into all of that hard work and the fragile resilience they might have built up.
Its easy to underestimate how much damage can be done by a sense of raw injustice. I think its fair to say that the robo-debts and the associated fallout will probably see more people reliant on Centrelink payments for longer periods of time. Anger is all I feel.